The prospects for feeding humanity as we enter the new millennium are formidable. Given the every increasing world population, it remains a major goal of agricultural research to improve crop yield. Until recently crop and plant improvements depended on selective breeding of plants having desirable characteristics. Such selective breeding techniques, however, were often less than desirable as many plants had within them heterogeneous genetic complements that did not result in identical desirable traits to their parents.
Recently, advances in molecular biology have allowed mankind to manipulate the germplasm of animals and plants. Genetic engineering of plants entails the isolation and manipulation of genetic material (typically in the form of DNA or RNA) and the subsequent introduction of that genetic material into a plant or plant cells. Such technology has led to the development of plants with increased pest resistance, plants that are capable of expressing pharmaceuticals and other chemical, and plants that express beneficial traits. Advantageously such plants not only contain a gene of interest, but remain fertile and often desirably to pass the gene on to its progeny.
One particular area of interest of late has been the development of plants with improved production of seeds. Improving the yield in the production of seeds from cultivars, such as rice, canola, wheat, corn, and sunflower, can increase food production for animal and human consumption. Also, improved seed yield can have economic benefits by reducing the costs associated with producing seed for farming.
The yield of a plant crop may be improved by growing transgenic plants that are individually larger than the wild-type plant in vegetative and/or reproductive structure. It is known in the art that certain growth factors may be used to increase plant and/or plant flower size. Unfortunately, application of such growth factors is costly and time consuming, and do not necessarily substantially increase the yield of seeds from the plants. A need, therefore, exists for developing an improved method for increasing the yield of seeds from plants.